


Dandelion Seeds

by Anonymous



Series: okurimono-dono [7]
Category: Evillious Chronicles
Genre: Childhood Memories, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28833597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: If there's anyone who knows what love is, it certainly isn't the Marquis of Toragay.
Relationships: Kaspar Blankenheim/Margarita Blankenheim
Series: okurimono-dono [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968400
Kudos: 13
Collections: Union Server of Evillious 24 hour ficjam





	Dandelion Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Pauses

I think I might have loved her, once upon a time.

Things were simpler then. I was her prince and she my princess. We danced wildly in the courtyard of her father's mansion, feet bare, breath short, drunk on the feverish excitement of young children playing at love. The weather here in Toragay is not especially favorable most times of the year. But even under an overcast sky her smile glowed brighter than a sunny day.

I barely remember the day I asked her to marry me for the first time. According to her, it was a night at the end of summer. We crouched behind a hedge of privet, hiding from the house's servants. It would have been long past dinnertime, long past bedtime even. Had we been found we surely would have received a great scolding, she told me with a quick laugh. And when the moon climbed the sky to just the right place to catch us in its lonely light, I supposedly picked a dandelion from the ground. She told me how, tying its stem into a ring, I had slid it onto her finger. Then, I had apparently kissed her cheek and asked her softly to be my wife. As she sat there shocked, I blew the downy seeds from the flower.

At this point in the story, her face had flushed red, and she laid her hand over mine. "Remember how they drifted away on the wind?" she murmured. "Do you remember?"

* * *

The day we got married, the church was hot. The likeness of the twin dragon gods looked down disapprovingly upon the rows of pews overflowing with wedding-guests. The voice of the priest droned on beyond my attention, and the attendees watched me uncomfortably, sweating and fanning themselves with the wedding pamphlets.

The moment I kissed her at the altar is when I first noticed it. The way her breath paused, caught for just a second. It was not the way a girl's breath would catch when a boy leaned in to kiss her---I had too much experience with other women to not know that. It was just a bit too long for that, a bit too abrupt. There was no audible intake of breath, no accelerating heartbeat. Her breathing simply ceased for two whole seconds, and then resumed as if nothing had happened at all.

The night of our wedding I went to bed drunk. Having had too much champagne at the reception, I was too out of it to remember my new wife or to even undress. I simply stumbled onto the bed and let my eyelids slam shut, falling into dreamless sleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a full bladder and a sick stomach. Trying to get up to walk to the lavatory, I pushed my hand against the bed to sit up. Then I stopped. Something was in the bed next to me. I could feel its weight bearing down on the sheets, and the tip of my pinky finger just barely brushed its smooth, flat surface.

I whipped around to see her silhouette there, eyes turned towards me, wide and unapologetically open. I yelled in surprise, but she gave no reaction. As I calmed myself and began to scold her, I noticed something that made me stop in my tracks.

Her chest did not move. She was not breathing. Her eyes, mouth, and nose were all still. Not a single twitch in her entire body. As if she were paused in time.

* * *

The day I first asked to marry her? She didn't remember it correctly.

I know this because the servants would not have been looking for us long past our bedtime. I know this because Dr. Felix would never have allowed a weed like the dandelion to crop up in his courtyard. I know this because the ring I offered her was crude and hewn from wood, a failed version of many better rings I had offered to many other girls.

But she spoke of it with such conviction that after some time I began to believe it too. That perhaps we had once been in love, truly.

Thinking on it now, though, I don't think that was ever the case. I never loved her, and she never loved me. That much I can be sure of. No matter how much she bends to my every whim, complies with my outrageous demands, and tries to look after me, some part of me knows that she has never looked at me.

She only looks through me, and I only look down on her.

* * *

The pausing's been getting worse recently. It used to be that she would forget to breathe twice a week at most. Nowadays she simply stops from time to time, remaining fixed in whatever position she was holding.

I hate her pauses. It makes my mistresses uneasy, and then they leave before I've had my fun. It makes me uneasy too, no matter how many times I've seen it. And I don't think her new friend she tells me about so enthusiastically helps.

Though she pauses more, ever since meeting that "Elluka" she's become more upbeat. Optimistic. Dreamy. She tells me that Elluka's teaching her magic. The ways of the shamans of old, who roamed this land when it was still named Heldogort. She's also begun to spend more time with the little plot of dirt she calls a garden. Says she's taken a liking to roses, recently.

She's been hiding her wrists from me more often. Each time I walk by she crosses her arms and puts on her best smile, then goes on about my upcoming birthday and the present she's planning. She's hiding something from me, isn't she?

...But then, I suppose, I never really cared.

* * *

I think I saw her in a dream, once. We were in a forest, standing together under a great gnarled tree. Moonlight filtered through its branches, catching us in its silver net. The night was silent except for the sound of our shallow breathing, caught in an interlocking rhythm.

I plucked a dandelion from the earth and tied it gingerly around her delicate finger. It was warm, and when I leaned in to kiss her I could feel the heat of her breath and the dew of her cheek. When she looked at me with her green eyes they were bright and filled with joy.

Standing there beneath the ancient tree, I think I might have told her that I love her, perjuring myself under the cold witness of a thousand stars.

But in the moment I believed I did, and I put my arms around her and held her close, just the two of us, alone in the unending darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> By Gift (@okurimono-dono.tumblr.com)


End file.
